Content for Your Business Book
Once you have decided to author a business book, you have a few more important decisions to make. Obviously, you are going to need a manuscript, so the first questions to be answered are:
Some folks have loads of ideas for books they could write. Some folks don’t think they have anything to say at all. Others figure everything they want to say has already been said before, so what’s the point of writing yet another book?
“There is nothing new under the sun” was already an observation noted in the book of Ecclesiastes several thousands of years ago. And yet we keep making new observations and giving new interpretations of our human existence.
Start with your expertise. Of course there will always be someone “more expert” than you – and someone more expert even than them. But there are also people “less expert” than you and these are the people who will be your readers.
Spend a good deal of time thinking about these readers. Prepare a few profiles of who they are, including their age, gender, socio-economic status and so on. Name them. Give them faces. You have to know them really well to speak to them in a way they will listen.
What you want to tell them may be exactly the same as a book that was just published by someone else, but if you carefully present the topic for a specific audience, it will resonate with them in a unique way. Think of all the varieties of “Chicken Soup” books available!
Once you have a plan on what the book is about, all you have to do is write it. Simple! And this is where a lot of folks lose steam. It takes a good deal of time and effort to write a book and few of us are able to commit to finishing such a big project.
Instead, you need to break it down into manageable chunks. Writing scheduled blog posts can be a great way to create content on a regular basis. With an outline in mind of your finished book, your blog articles are chapters, each one bringing you closer to the completion of your first draft.
Writing a few pages about a single topic is easier to accomplish than an entire book’s worth of thoughts. Even if you only write one post/chapter per month, at the end of the year, you’ll have 12 chapters written. That’s a book! Certainly you will want to rework these posts for the finished manuscript, but editing is easier than staring at a blank screen, trying to create something new.
Another plus to the blog-posts-as-chapters strategy is that you have content with which to start building readership while promoting your business. You can get feedback, find an audience, and make connections that will be extremely useful when it’s time to launch and market your book, as well as finding new clients now. That’s a win/win situation for both your day job and your author aspirations!